Investigators in the United States won’t be handed over the decryption keys necessary to access digital data seized from the home of internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom in early 2012, a New Zealand judge ruled this week.

Authorities raided Dotcom’s mansion outside of Auckland, New
Zealand, nearly two-and-a-half years ago as part of an operation
conducted with the aid of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation
in response to felony copyright infringement and racketeer
allegations brought in America against the German-born
hacker-turned-businessman.

Computer hard drives seized from Dotcom’s Coatesville, NZ home
were cloned and given to the FBI after the incident. This past
January, though, the New Zealand Court of Appeals ruled that the
American feds should never have legally acquired the copied data.

Dotcom’s attorneys have long sought the return of the largely
encrypted hard drives, but Torrent Freak reports that the founder
of the file-sharing site Megaupload was likely to only receive as
much on the condition that in exchange he hand over to local
authorities the keys necessary to decrypt the contents.

According to Radio New Zealand, Justice Helen Winkelmann of the
nation’s high court ruled Wednesday that federal officials there
are formally barred from giving the password to the FBI if it’s
provided by Mr. Dotcom, because the FBI only acquired the
encrypted data in the first place using flawed warrants.

On Twitter, however, Dotcom suggested that authorities in the US
may have already been able to crack into the illegally seized
hard drives.

High Court: NZ Police is not allowed to provide my encryption
password to the FBI (as if they don't have it already).
http://t.co/02Jo8JeoS6

Dotcom, who changed his name from Kim Schmitz in 2005, did not
immediately respond to RT’s request for comment. Previously,
though, the internet tycoon said in an exclusive interview that he hoped to someday
“encrypt half of the internet” in order to “reestablished a
balance between a person — an individual — and the state.”

In Jan. 2013 on the one-year anniversary of the raid, Dotcom
launched Mega — an online file locker that encrypts its users’
contents. The US Dept. of Justice has since continued to pursue
Dotcom, whom they want extradited to America to face charges.